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During braking events, a brake corner sustains high brake torque, generating a large amount of heat in the process. This is most significant during mountain descent events and vehicle race track events. The brake thermal events not only reduce brake friction coefficient and lining life, but also produce elevated brake fluid temperature. Traditionally, brake hardware testing is warranted to evaluate brake fluid temperature for high speed flat track and mountain descent. These tests are costly and time-consuming. A CAE process to predict brake fluid temperature early in the vehicle development process before hardware exists, and to reduce and to replace testing will greatly benefit the vehicle development process. To this end, multiple analyses can be run. The heat transfer coefficients and cooling coefficients were evaluated from relevant CFD analyses.

At elevated temperatures, such as those encountered under race track or fade test conditions, the closed-form solution to the lumped capacitance model for characterizing brake cooling (fitted to a standard cooling test temperature range) tends to break down and provide an inaccurate representation of brake rotor cooling behavior. Accurate prediction of cooling is fundamental to brake system component sizing and selection of materials at the early stages of a vehicle program; this is especially true of a high performance vehicle with track performance requirements. To this end, alternative approaches to characterizing brake cooling have been examined to determine their suitability for use in measurement and simulation of brake performance.

In racetrack conditions, brake systems are subjected to extreme energy loads and energy load distributions. This can lead to very high friction surface temperatures, especially on the brake corner that operates, for a given track, with the most available traction and the highest energy loading. Individual brake corners can be stressed to the point of extreme fade and lining wear, and the resultant degradation in brake corner performance can affect the performance of the entire brake system, causing significant changes in pedal feel, brake balance, and brake lining life. It is therefore important in high performance brake system design to ensure favorable operating conditions for the selected brake corner components under the full range of conditions that the intended vehicle application will place them under. To address this task in an early design stage, it is helpful to use brake system modeling tools to analyze system performance.